by Finian Cunningham
Zelensky’s racket is coming to an end as Russian forces push on with decimating what’s left of the NATO proxy war machine.
Moldavian President Maia Sandu made explosive claims this week that Russia was conspiring with Serbian, Belorussian and Montenegrin agents to overthrow her government.
Sandu is a Western darling, so her flimsy allegations received a lot of airplay from Western media outlets.
The accusations provoked consternation in Serbia and Montenegro whose governments rejected any such involvement and demanded Moldavia provide details to back up the claims. Respective ambassadors have been summoned to explain the unprecedented tensions.
For its part, Moscow dismissed the alleged plot to destabilize the government in Chisinau as “unfounded and unsubstantiated”. Russia countered that the real motive was for Kiev to expand the war to embroil neighbors.
Such a reckless, incendiary move by the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime would fit its unsavory record for delinquent conduct, from demanding ever-more lethal weapons from its NATO backers, to staging false-flag massacres in Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere, to its use of “nuclear terrorism” by firing rockets at Europe’s largest civilian nuclear power plant at Zaporozhye.
Moldavia’s President Sandu gave the game away when she disclosed her sole source for the alleged Russian plot was Ukrainian state intelligence. Apparently, no evidence was presented, purportedly in order to “protect sources”.
Last week while Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was being pandered to in Brussels at the European Union leaders’ summit, he made similar unfounded claims that Russia “was planning to destroy Moldavia”. There is therefore a scripted feel to the claims.
The putative objective for Moscow is to install a friendly Moldavian puppet regime bordering western Ukraine and from which Russia can launch military forces to expedite its year-old war. Russia has already long-established military bases in Transnistria, the separatist region of Moldavia immediately bordering Ukraine.
Moldavia’s Maia Sandu is an American-educated, former World Bank official who is keenly pro-West. She managed last year to make Moldavia a candidate for European Union membership thereby delivering on her long-held promises to bring Western capital to one of Europe’s poorest nations. Sandu is also pushing the idea of joining the NATO alliance. Like the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia, such a move by Moldavia has been lambasted by Russia as completely unacceptable to its national security interests.
That Sandu would regurgitate Zelensky’s lurid allegations of a Russian subterfuge is not surprising. The pair are politically close. Sandu has vociferously condemned Russia for “aggression” against Ukraine and she promotes the NATO narrative of Kiev taking a brave stand for the rest of Europe and for “world democratic freedom”.
There is doubtless a cynical, self-serving agenda for the Moldavian president and her government. By talking up national security threats and alleged aggression from Russia, the pro-Western cabal in Chisinau is trying to speed up membership of the EU and NATO.
This trick has been tried before. In 2016, Russia was accused of a similar plot to overthrow the government in Montenegro and even of planning to assassinate the country’s then prime minister. No evidence was ever presented, just lots of sound and fury. It was all based on salacious hearsay and contrived Western talking-points smearing Moscow. The next year, however, saw Montenegro being accepted into the NATO bloc as the 30th member.
Even before the dramatic claims this week of Russian subversion, the Sandu government in Moldavia had appealed for modern air defense weapons from supposed NATO allies. It claims that it is next in line for alleged Russian invasion.
